The Dripping Death
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Goretober day 3: Poisoned. Azula, having been poisoned joins Zuko for the war-end anniversary feast so that she can make one final spectacle before she passes.


In the back of her mind Azula knows exactly what is happening. She just doesn't want to believe it. There isn't much that she can do, save for laying down and waiting for the end. Her hands feel like ice. Like she's been meandering about in the Water Tribes without gloves. She looks at her hands, her veins appear, raised and black. She doesn't know what kind of poison is coursing through them.

Azula wanders down the hallway. She only has herself to blame. She hadn't been vigilant enough and she is paying the price. She has been a fool, knowing that she has so many enemies but leaving herself open to attacks.

It could be anyone from a servant to a member of the political opposition. Or even a civilian who hadn't taken kindly to her return from the institution to the mainland. She found it a hint ironic that after purging the paranoia that had sent her there in the first place, that her fears would come into fruition.

She feels dizzy and like she may vomit at any moment. She ought to lie back down and die in private. But she wants them to see-who ever this person is-she wants them to see what they have done to her.

Azula often found that those who used poison were the cowardly ones. The ones with the weak stomachs who couldn't stand to actually see their victims die.

She makes her way to the dining hall where a feast celebrating the anniversary of the end of the war is taking place.

The music and chatter puts a pounding in her head and hikes the sense of vertigo up a notch or two. She slips into her usual seat. Despite the frigid feeling in her veins, she is sweating profusely. A sense of anxiety and impending doom lets her know that it is almost time.

The walls seem to shift and the table bulges. She can't tell if it is part of the illusion or if her hands are actually swelling. Either way around, they look puffy and bloated. She turns her attention away, her stomach is queasy as it is.

"Are you okay?" Zuko's voice sounds distant with an extra layer as though there are two of him speaking. His face seems to distort, his scar leaking down his face like a blur-brush effect. Azula's head dips and lolls.

She feels firm hands, they are the only things keeping her from faceplanting into the table.

"Azula?" He asks giving her a solid shake. Her head lurches back and it begins in full. She lets out a piercing scream as a deep stabbing sensation assaults her brain. The veins have bulged black up and down her arm and begin to appear on her neck. Her eyes roll back as a fluid of the same consistency and color of her poisoned blood leaks from the corners of them. Her nose is gushing too and the sharp stabs persist.

Tears intermingle with the black ooze.

She falls forward and into Zuko. She doesn't know how he hasn't recoiled in disgust. She tries grasping at his shirt but she can't fully close her fist, it is all the confirmation she needs that her hands are indeed swollen.

She doesn't have much time to think about it as the first tremor wracks her body. Before she knows it, she is on the ground with her back arched as her body begins to seize uncontrollably. A grim conclusion of black ooze and froth leak from her mouth as her eyes glaze over. With a few final spasms, her body goes still.

The only movement in the room seems to come from the inky fluid dripping from her nose and mouth, down to her chin and from her eyes down to her cheeks.

Zuko loses his meal and the crowd erupts into a series of chatters both nervous and morbidly curious. Within are murmerings to the effect of, "this is a blessing." Others vocalize that the princess hadn't deserved that.

Mostly, there was fear. Potent and intense fear that there is another politically-charged war on the verge of breaking. Fear that, perhaps, someone is simply beginning a sick game and they wanted to make a bold introduction.

**.oOo.**

Fear turns to revulsion when the princess rises.

It happens nearly a week later, just before the conclusion of the open-casket parting ceremony.

Her eyes feel like they have been stitched together and her vision is misty and gauzy when she manages to pry them open. Her skin feels as though it is made of a hot and soft wax. At first she can't move. She can only make out Zuko and TyLee's weeps and a choir of consolation.

"I'm so sorry." "It's almost over." "She didn't deserve to go out like that." "Yes, she did." "Really, truly sorry, your majesty."

Azula tries to sit up once more, but she can't. She is afraid that they are going to close the coffin on her. She can make out a fuzzy shape, presumably Zuko, reaching an arm out to do just that. So she tries to speak.

That garners better results, but not the result she was hoping for. Her voice sounds strange; low and slurred and horrifically sloppy. She didn't even make out a full sentence. But it halts Zuko from closing the casket.

Azula finds the strength to lift her arm, her hand grasps at the air like a newborn testing its limbs. And perhaps, in a sense, that is exactly what she is. She can't speak right, she can't see right, she can't walk nor take care of herself, and her brain is practically mush.

Zuko lifts her out of the casket and cradles her in his arms. She can only babble incoherently as she tries to articulate what she wants to say. What does she want to say?

The crowd looks at her with pity and disgust and some with relief and joy to see her moving again. But, once again, fear is the dominating emotion. It is so palpable that Azula could grasp at it.

Of course they are afraid, a dead woman has just reanimated. She wants to tell them that she is still her. That she doesn't plan on harming anyone who didn't deserve it. But vocabulary seems to be lost on her. And even if it wasn't her tongue seems to fill the entirety of her mouth making it hard for her to breathe let alone produce any human sound.

She does have the vocabulary for one thing though. To the best of her ability, she tries to ask Zuko to help her. To fix her. She doesn't quite understand what is happening to her and she is afraid too.

More so than anyone else.

Azula's foggy eyes grow wide.

She doesn't know what she has become or how to fix it.

The film seems to clear from her eyes after she blinks them rapidly. She understands their repulsion and terror when she looks at her hands. They are sickly pale and decorated with spiderwebs of pulsing and prominent black. Still bloated, perhaps more so after having begun the putrefaction stage.

She wants to be dead again.

Dead for real.

Azula doesn't know how he manages but Zuko still holds her, rubbing her back soothingly. "You're going to be okay. I'll find a way to fix this."

She wants to tell him that fixing this is as easy as sending a bolt of lightning through her heart, but she can only manage an indistinguishable gurgle.

"I promise, I'm going to fix this. You'll be your old self soon."

Her mind may have been ravaged and dumbed by death but she is not stupid enough to believe him. She can't say as much. But, to some degree, she can cry. And she does, tears roll down her corpse-like face. Her fingers clutch at Zuko's shirt. Maybe it is good that she can cry, the display of human emotion seems to quiet the blood-thirsty mob some.

Zuko carries her into the palace and tucks her into bed. She realizes that she has lost sensation. She can't distinguish the coolness of the outside breeze from the still warmth of the blankets she is now cocooned in.

She can't smell either. Neither the smokey scent of Zuko's skin nor can she smell herself-smoke and perfume-on her pillows.

Azula wonders if she is being punished for her misdeeds. Why else would she be thrown back into a semi-decayed body with a mind that can barely function? She just hopes that the few kind deeds that she had done, post-recovery, will be enough karma to either restore her to what she once was or to kill her for good.

Zuko moves tangled and stringy hair from her face. "You're going to be okay, I promise."

She wonders if they ever caught the person who poisoned her in the first place.


End file.
